Paddy Johnson Will Brand and Whitney Kimball

Dogs are people too. Gregory Burns has been running his dogs and others through MRI scanners to learn about how dog brains work. He discovered that dogs share similar emotions and concludes that we need better laws to protect them from places like puppy mills and dog racing. [The New York Times]

Donald and Shelly Rubin are our kind of philanthropists. They focus their giving on smaller organizations outside of Manhattan. The Times has the profile. [The New York Times]

David Carr reviews the Julian Assange film “The Fifth Estate” for the New York Times. He makes it sound like a Hollywood wash; Wikileaks isn’t happy and has released their own annotated script. [New York Times]

In an interview with the Village Voice, Banksy says he’s lives in New York and intends to continue painting on walls and bathrooms throughout the city, and those paintings are quickly defaced. You can look at them while listening to his audio guide, accessed by a toll-free number. There’s also nothing to sell that’s immediately attached to this series. “I know street art can feel increasingly like the marketing wing of an art career, so I wanted to make some art without the price tag attached,” he says. “There’s no gallery show or book or film. It’s pointless. Which hopefully means something.” [Village Voice]

This seems like a terrible idea. British writer Alain de Botton, is using the Art Gallery of Ontario as his guinea pig for his book out October 14th, “Art as Therapy”. That means the de Botton will use works in the collection to illustrate cures for very specific problems. For example, in the online component of the exhibition, “love” leads to the subheading “I want to break up” which leads to a 1704 painting of strawberries by Dutch master Adriaen Coorte. “The artist knows something about us: how familiarity dulls our appreciation of what is on offer,” reads the description. God, what bullshit. [The Toronto Star]

An unpaid intern’s sexual harassment claim has been thrown out by a New York judge because interns don’t count as people employees. A few months ago, ProPublica broke down how these laws [don’t] work. [Businessweek via Gawker]

When DIS asks Mark Dion (who makes art out of environmental destruction) if he sees a future for eco-friendly policies, he says no. “How about some fucking leadership?” he asks. Don’t look at him. “I am not the artist to turn to for answers about how to fix things. I am the guy you call when you want to know how bad things are and how we got here. That’s my job, to chronicle disaster.” I think that’s stupid. If you want something done, do it yourself, Mark Dion. [DIS]

The Village Voice rounds up Bill de Blasio’s Reddit AMA; he actually answered some questions. One solution offered to the rent problem in the city is to rapidly develop market-rate apartments to drive prices down. He promises more AMAs when he’s mayor. [Village Voice]

Important: Actor Carl Weathers ends every single one of his tweets with the phrase “Be Peace.” [Carl Weathers]

All-star designers Experimental Jet Set say the W they’ve used for the Whitney’s logo represents “the heartbeat of New York, of USA.” It “encapsulates” a “dialectic between the ‘old world’ and the ‘new world’. Does this dialectic need to be encapsulated because it’s in the middle of the ocean?

This week at The L Magazine, we list off a few of the week’s best events and openings. We’re most excited about artist Trevor Paglen’s talk at the NYPL and Barry Hoggard and James Wagner’s show at English Kills but there’s heaps of other stuff to do too.

Last week, Corinna Kirsch and I awarded NADA’s New York debut with a full six-pack of whoop-ass, knowing full well it would not be as spacious or eventful as Frieze. NADA's not trying to re-invent the fair model like the Independent, Seven, or Moving Image, and it doesn’t have talks. It's just a fun fair, with a lot of energy, and way too many walls.

Get ready for non-stop art viewing. If you like art at all, next week's schedule should be packed with art fairs, biennial viewings, and openings. If you don't know where to start, we're here to help. Our one sentence synopsis as follows: This year more elitists, more protests, more video art, more foreigners, and continued efforts to disguise art fairs as nightclubs.